


The Places We Go

by Surakian



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Daybreak Town (Kingdom Hearts), Exploration, First Kiss, First Love, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Pining, Pre-Canon, Scala ad Caelum (Kingdom Hearts), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24065704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Surakian/pseuds/Surakian
Summary: Newly minted as Keyblade Apprentices, Xehanort and Eraqus decide their first adventure together would be to explore the ruins of Daybreak Town that lie under the sea of Scala ad Caelum. As they learn more about the strange ruins, they find themselves growing closer…Eraqus ignored Xehanort, a coy smile growing wide and bright on his face as the soft fairy lights floated around Eraqus, as though his excitement were drawing the light in closer to him. Xehanort certainly felt like he was being drawn closer to the other teen, but he remained where he was. “Very few are willing to dive down here like a crazy person unlike you—”“Hey!”“Think about it, Xehanort. The ruins are ours alone to explore. Nobody but us can come here.”Xehanort’s stomach flipped as he imagined the ruins being a secret place all of their own, something away from the constant looks from the other apprentices and masters in the training halls.He liked the sound of that.
Relationships: Eraqus/Xehanort (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	The Places We Go

Light streamed in through a large fracture in the crumbling ceiling dozens of feet above water, hitting the surface of a still, dark sea that filled the chamber below. An assortment of unmoving gears and cogs lined the ceiling’s surface, and long, rusted support beams that held the gears up disappeared below the water. Broken tiles covered a horizontal structure hanging by various suspension wires in the middle of the room, and a pile of broken gears sat like towers rising up from under the water just below the suspended structure.  
  
All was silent in the massive chamber…at least until two teenage boys burst forth from the sea’s surface and began climbing up the mound of gears. With jubilant energy, the two raced each other to the top, grasping at any edge and corner they could in hopes of charting the fastest path upwards. They both reached the top of the gears at the same time, but neither seemed to care as they both took deep breaths in between a sudden laughter that burst forth from them.  
  
As they both calmed down and their laughter drifted off, they both began looking around the dim, watery chamber they found themselves in. A small puddle of water formed at their feet where they stood on top of the massive cog, and although the two teens tried their best, very little else was visible to them in the darkness.  
  
One of the teenagers—dark-haired with thoughtful look on his face—casually raised his right hand up, and then with a flourish of his wrist, fairy lights suddenly filled the cavern with a soft, white glow, adding to the cadence of thin light coming from the crack in the ceiling above.   
  
“Showing off, Eraqus?” The other teen—white haired with a rather roguish smirk on his face— asked, chuckling softly as he squeezed out some sea water from his shorts and sat down on the gear. “There’s no audience or master to impress here.”  
  
“Maybe I’m trying to impress you, Xehanort.” Eraqus’s lips curled whimsically as he, too, sat down next to the older teen. It was same way he always smiled when he was trying to rile Xehanort up.   
  
Xehanort hadn’t yet decided if he should be bothered or amused by it.   
  
The older teen could admit to himself that he marveled at how easily Eraqus could call upon such delicate lights. The actual spell to summon them was intricate and difficult to navigate if you didn’t have a natural affinity to white magic. Whenever he visited these watery ruins, the most he could do is call on a small orb of light that hovered closely to his head. Anything more and they would explode in his face or just fizzle out like a dying firecracker. Eraqus could call upon hundreds of those orbs as though it were as natural as breathing.   
  
It was ethereal and spellbinding.  
  
He had no intentions of telling Eraqus as much, though.   
  
Electing to ignore the goading comment with a roll of his eyes, Xehanort instead turned his attention to massive chamber they stood in. With it being bathed in the light of Eraqus’ magic, he could better assess the room he had been slowly exploring for the better part of the week—and what a sight it was.   
  
Before today he could hardly get an idea of the full scope and size of the chamber, but now he could see every cog and gear that filled the odd room. The muted sandstone tiles and almost indiscernible purple brick walls that lined the room glowed with renewed vibrance under Eraqus’s spell.  
  
“I wonder,” Xehanort muttered as he crossed his arms over his bare chest, an inquisitive look coming over his face. “By my estimates, this once used to be the lowest chamber of the ruins, and the mechanisms in here probably helped to operate the plumbing, lighting, and other systems throughout the ruins.”  
  
Eraqus cocked his head slightly at Xehanort’s observation and turned to look around the room himself. “We’re in the highest part of the ruins. How could it be a basement?”  
  
“The ruins are upside-down.” Xehanort resisted rolling his eyes again, and instead pointed up at the ceiling of the chamber.    
  
Eraqus craned his neck, looking at the uneven, crumbling tiles above their heads. Confusion lined his face and Xehanort couldn’t believe that Eraqus could be so smart yet so blind to such obvious details.   
  
“What kind of idiot tiles a ceiling with such a heavy type of stone?”  
  
“Huh,” Eraqus’ grey eyes widened in understanding. “That’s weird.”  
  
As Eraqus began scrutinizing the chamber closely, Xehanort watched as the small orbs of light floated around the room like lazy fireflies in the summer. One of the lights caught his attention, and he followed its flickering path as it floated back toward Eraqus.   
  
Xehanort couldn’t help but find the younger apprentice to be just as fascinating as the ruins around them. Rivulets of water ran down Eraqus’ pale back and his dark hair clung to his shoulders in damp waves as he looked around the cavern with bright-eyed curiosity. The older teen was struck with a strange urge to brush the dark hair to the side in order to get a better look at Eraqus’s neck. It was always hidden underneath the high collar of their black training shirts, and it was strange to see the young noble so casually exposed.  
  
His left hand raised up slightly, hesitantly. He wondered what the contrast of their skin looked like here as the shadows played against the light. He wondered—  
  
“So this is where you’ve been disappearing off to?” Eraqus suddenly turned to face the white-haired teen with a soft smile.  
  
Xehanort looked away from Eraqus, feeling caught, and ran his hand through his own damp hair as casually as he could.   
  
For over a week now Eraqus had taken to silently following Xehanort around, no doubt trying to figure out where the older apprentice would be going without him in tow. Xehanort was always a step ahead, though, and slipped away before Eraqus could catch up to him.  
  
It wasn’t as though Xehanort wasn’t allowed to leave the castle, but since he arrived to Scala ad Caelum, he had chosen to sequester himself within the castle’s massive library except when he went into town or off on missions with the Master and Eraqus. He knew Eraqus found it strange that he willingly left the library without having to force him out.   
  
Compared to the other apprentice-hopefuls and scholars of Scala ad Caelum who all grew up on the legends of the Keyblade and Age of Fairytales, it was necessary for Xehanort to spend all of his free time playing catch-up by reading as many books and documents as humanly possible. He needed to familiarize himself with the history of this new world covered in alabaster and gold.  
  
He needed to be the best.   
  
Xehanort pushed on and on for one long year, learning as much as he could until he had rightfully earned his place beside Eraqus as their Master’s new apprentices, and only then did he finally feel like he could relax.  
  
…Except he was not one for relaxing.   
  
An old, familiar restlessness stirred within him not too long after that achievement. Xehanort certainly loved reading and learning, but he loved exploring just as much. There were only so many books one could read before a person felt like they were going insane, and he knew he was reaching the point where he’d set the whole library on fire if he stayed inside any longer.  
  
So he started wandering the city aimlessly when he wasn’t on missions. Xehanort took his time memorizing the winding white pathways, looking for shortcuts and secret alcoves that could lead to new locations. During his aimless walks, he remembered something that had caught his attention the few times he traveled to other islands on the cable lifts or gondolas.  
  
The shadowed outlines of the strange ruins underneath Scala ad Caelum’s main island were ever-present, yet mostly distorted by the shifting blue waves. Xehanort had been too wrapped up in his studies and training to even think about what those strange ruins were. Only in his doldrums did he begin to remember their existence.   
  
Nobody ever spoke about them—not the scholars who spent their days analyzing the asynchronous shift of time between words or writing theories about the different cultures they encountered; certainly not the gossiping sailors and conductors who always had some extravagant story about their days as explorers to tell the masses as they ferried people to and fro Scala’s islands by boat or cable car.   
  
He definitely never read about them during his hermitage within the library, and the other apprentice-hopefuls never even bothered to speak to him besides Eraqus.  
  
Asking Eraqus crossed his mind once or twice, but the teen was always so evasive about answering his questions if they delved too closely to the Keyblade War, and asking their Master was inconceivable considering how vague they often were when it came to answering questions. The Master always encouraged any apprentice who studied in the training halls of Scala to seek the answers themselves…   
  
There was the iconic stage show in the heart of the city which featured a mechanical shadowbox with beautiful panels that depicted the rise of Scala ad Caelum. Little was told about what came before Scala, only that Daybreak Town was home to the Keyblade Wielders of the Age of Fairytales, and that from the wreckage of the Keyblade War, Scala rose from the sea as the new seat of power for the universe.  
  
Xehanort had no need for such vague tales. He wanted to learn as much as he could about Daybreak Town and why it remained in ruins underneath Scala like the hidden roots of a massive tree.   
  
So, of course, Eraqus followed after him.   
  
Every single day, in fact.  
  
And every single day Xehanort would give Eraqus the slip and reach the ruins all on his own…at least until the younger teen finally caught up to Xehanort and demanded to come along on his journey.  
  
_“Am I to not have my own secrets?” Xehanort had complained futilely, knowing that Eraqus would only continue to chase after him until his curiosity was satisfied.  
  
__“If it were secret, you would have done a much better job of sneaking around. You are hardly ever sloppy. In fact, I think you wanted me to find you.”  
  
__‘Curse that sly fox.’  
  
__Xehanort did not bother arguing and merely relented to the younger teen.  
  
_“I’ve only started coming here recently,” Xehanort turned to look at Eraqus, frowning slightly at the memory of being caught. “I didn’t even know there were ruins here. How come you never told me?”  
  
“Everybody here knows about them,” Xehanort knew he pushed the right button with his question because Eraqus had enough shame to blush. The younger teen picked up a piece of worn stone that had been sitting on the massive cog’s surface and fiddled with it idly. “It feels like you’ve always been here, so I…forgot.”  
  
‘ _Always, huh?’_ Xehanort never belonged anywhere before. The islands never felt like home, and nobody ever understood his desire for more than what a small, quiet island life could offer. He wanted to see new sights, discover new worlds, learn everything that he possibly could.   
  
When he first arrived in Scala ad Caelum, Xehanort stood in the city’s harbor in shock, hardly able to wrap his head around a place so full of life and wonder. Not even the main island back home could compare to the massive, sprawling hills covered top to bottom in all sorts of homes, shops, and windmills. The salty sea that lied between the islands and the cable lifts that connected them all seemed so foreign to him when he had come from such a small place.  
  
Even after spending a year in Scala ad Caelum, he had barely even scratched the surface of what could be discovered in such a vast and sprawling world.   
  
This set him apart from the rest. He knew how some people looked at him. Xehanort knew he didn’t belong with the way their eyes would linger on him whenever he wandered through the city, the hushed whispers that would fill the halls of the different training halls as the apprentice-hopefuls spoke about him behind his back when they though he couldn’t hear him.   
  
He was an outside who became one of the only two new Keyblade Apprentices to the most renown Master in all of Scala ad Caelum out of hundreds of potential students that sought out the elusive spot. He’s the stranger who became fast friends with the cherished ancestor of the first masters from the Age of Fairytales, somebody who was always considered untouchable due to his heritage and noble status.   
  
Two impossible feats were accomplished by an outsider, and everyday he proved how much of an outsider he continued to be by not knowing   
  
No matter how hard he trained and how much of a prodigy he was at wielding the Keyblade, all Xehanort would ever be was an intruder who did not understand the order of things and whose light paled in comparison to so many others around him.  
  
Though, sometimes when he looked at Eraqus, all of those fears and doubts seemed to melt away.  
  
Eraqus nudged Xehanort with his shoulder, a familiar gesture to draw Xehanort out of his constantly running thoughts. “It’s not like they are talked about, anyways. The ruins have always been off-limits except to Keyblade Masters.”  
  
“Really? But why? There is so much to discover down here.” Xehanort found himself fascinated by the odd, twisting pathways and strange canals that led deeper into the ruins beneath the sea. Rarely could Xehanort quell his own curiosity over the unknown, and with such a huge mystery at his fingertips, he knew there was no way he could stop himself from exploring.  
  
Eraqus shrugged, carelessly tossing the worn stone that he had been fiddling with into the water. “It’s considered a sacred place.”  
  
Looking around the crumbling chamber, Xehanort certainly didn’t feel like it was treated like something sacred. The white-haired teen’s frown deepened. “If it’s so sacred, then why do they leave it in such a state of disrepair? Aren’t sacred things meant to be revered and respected?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Eraqus leaned back slightly with his arms behind his head, frustration lining his face. “It just is…this has always been the way.”   
  
Eraqus’ unforthcoming responses were nothing new to Xehanort. He could tell the younger teen knew more about Daybreak Town than he was letting on, but he was patient enough to wait and find out what that secret was. Eraqus always told him the truth in the end.  
  
Xehanort just needed to ask the right questions.  
  
Suddenly, Eraqus leaned in close to Xehanort face, his grey eyes filed with amusement which definitely spelled trouble for Xehanort. “…you know, all that really means is that we can keep exploring without anybody finding out.”  
  
“‘We’? Who said anything about ‘we’?”  
  
Eraqus ignored Xehanort, a coy smile growing wide and bright on his face as the soft fairy lights floated around Eraqus, as though his excitement were drawing the light in closer to him. Xehanort certainly felt like _he_ was being drawn closer to the other teen, but he resisted the temptation. “Very few are willing to dive down here like a crazy person unlike you—”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“—and there _is_ magic that guards this place. It is the same magic that protects the castle and training halls. It’s why we can come down here and explore. The Master’s magic recognizes us and we aren’t considered a threat. Everybody else would hit an invisible barrier and be forced to turn around.”  
  
Xehanort had plenty of questions to ask about that, but he held back knowing Eraqus probably told him as much as he would be willing to share right now.  
  
“Think about it, Xehanort. The ruins are ours alone to explore. Nobody but us can come here.”  
  
Xehanort’s stomach flipped as he imagined the ruins being a secret place all of their own, something away from the constant looks from the other apprentices and masters in the training halls.  
  
He liked the sound of that.  
  
“Fine,” He turned his head away from Eraqus, hoping to hide the smile that started growing on his face despite his begrudging tone. Eraqus probably already knew, anyways. He always knew how to read him. “We can explore together. And no more following me around in secret. You aren’t as sly as you think you are.”  
  
Eraqus laughed, and Xehanort’s stomach did another flip.  
  
He liked the sound of that a lot.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing this since KH3 first released, but I've never had time to finish this. Now that Dark Road is on the horizon, I figured I might as well start posting this on here. The whole story is written, I just have to edit each chapter so hopefully it'll done before the end of May.
> 
> Comments are appreciated!
> 
> Follow me @khiethy on Twitter


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